Sector over Sector



This is the basic tutorial to teach you how to create a sector over another sector. It is not a room over room, but more like a two story house. You can not see the lower sector from the upper sector like you can in a room over room situation. To view this map in Shadow Warrior download secosec.zip




Fig 1. 2D mode view.

1. First create two rooms with an archway. I made the smaller room to the north with a lower ceiling than the larger room (appearance sake). You must be a where of the floor and ceiling heights of the sectors that are to be over each other. In our case the larger room will be the one that is the lower sector. You can determine the z-coordinate height of the floor and ceiling by placing the mouse cursor in the sector and pressing the TAB key. My ceiling height in the lower sector is -57344. So, the floor of the upper sector floor must be -57345 or lower (negitive number so watch it). The lower the z-coordinate number the greater the height is. For example, -3 is lower than 3, but in Build the height of -3 is higher than the height of 3. Don't ask me why they did it this way it's just the direction the designer(s) picked.


Fig 2. 3D mode view of ramp.

2. Next, place in a hallway (ramp) that will lead to the upper level, and a small sector that will be at the top of the ramp. Raise the floor of this small sector to be higher than the ceiling of the lower (large) sector. Now, you can slope the ramp to meet the floor of the upper sector using the "[" and "]" and/or Shift-[ and Shift-] keys (3D mode). If your slope is not slanting in the desired direction, go to 2D mode and place the cursor (in this case) inside the ramp sector on the right side and press Alt-F. Go back to 3D mode and try it again. Of course, you can use steps or other means to get up to the upper level.


Fig 3. Create sector C and it's archway.

3. It is best to overlap the upper and lower sectors. In other words, try not to have all the lines (walls) from one level directly over all the lines (walls) of the other. However, you can not under any conditions have any red lines directly over/under any lines from the other level.

In Fig. 3, A is the lower sector (room), B is the lower archway, and C is the upper archway. Notice that the red lines in the upper archway are not directly over the lines of sector A (the lower sector).


Fig 4. Colored sectors for this demo.

4. For the purpose of a better understanding I colored the lines for the two different levels. Green for the lower level A and Purple for the upper level D. You will note that they do overlap to some degree. Line E is the two walls on top of each other. This is shown with white lines. On line E you would not want any red lines (two way walls).

If you want to insert any sectors or sprites into one of these sectors, do so in the definite area. In this case that would be where the A and D letters are. Then you can drag the object(s) into the area that you want to be at.

5. Again, this is a basic tutorial for creating a sector over a sector. There are many different ways to create this effect. You can create it where the floor or ceiling explodes leading the player to the new level height. You can create windows and doorways that can be used and seen from an outside area. Just make sure that the red lines are connected to only one level area line. I made a hotel type map for Duke Nukem call bab2.map. So, if you have Duke Nukem and it's Build engine check it out. It has windows, doorways and such leading in and out of the different level heights.




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